John Brownstein, PhD

Chief Innovation Officer, Boston Children’s Hospital

John Brownstein, PHD, is the Chief Innovation Officer at Boston Children's Hospital. He is a global leader in HCIT and, in particular, the emerging fields of informatics and big data analytics. He runs a 50-person multi-disciplinary team focused on digital innovations that span clinicians and consumers. His group is supported by a multi-million dollar budget including grants from NIH, USAID, DoD, IARPA, CDC, Google, Skoll and Gates Foundation. His work has pioneered ‘digital epidemiology’- utilizing diverse digital data sources to understand population health. His work is published in over 150 peer-reviewed papers, all focused on new methods and applications in digital health. This work was recognized by the White House with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

He also leads the development of several novel patient facing public health systems, including HealthMap, Vaccine Finder and MedWatcher. The systems are considered premier global public health tools in use by millions of patients each year and endorsed by numerous public health agencies including CDC, WHO, DHS, DOD, HHS, and EU, and has been recognized by the National Library of Congress and the Smithsonian. In addition to research achievements, this translational impact comes from playing an advisory role to numerous agencies on real-time public health surveillance including HHS, DHS, CDC, IOM, WHO and the White House.

Dr. Brownstein is a successful entrepreneur having developed new technologies, started multiple companies and outlicensed technologies. John has extensive experience establishing industry/academic partnerships, including work with Google, Twitter and Uber. As a long time (11 years) BCH employee, he is familiar with BCH and the many talented doctors, nurses and scientists here who serve as the core of our innovation engine.